Friday, 30 June 2017

Esalen Institute

Conference center and hot springs resort in Big Sur, California. Since the early sixties, the Esalen Institute has held many seminars on various esoteric topics, and has been a nexus of many various individuals. Topics explored at the Institute include psychology, gesalt therapy, body work, psychic phenomena, mysticism, religion, psychedelics, human potentiality, and quantum physics.

The Institute was founded in 1964 by Mike Murphy and Dick Price out of Murphy's family resort. Murphy and Price had been running seminars at the resort beginning in 1962, with speakers gathered through an expanding network of contacts, beginning with Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, George Bateson, Gerald Heard, and others.

(see Anderson, Walter Truett, The Upstart Spring, Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1983 for an expansive history of Esalen)

Joe K. Adams and Dell Carson led an early conference on psychic phenomena. (Anderson, pg 59). In their first seminar on Human Potentiality, led by Willis Harman, every program leader was involved with LSD research: Adams, Harman, Gregory Bateson, Gerald Heard, Paul Kurtz, andMyron Stolaroff. (Anderson, pg 72)

Other drug-culture luminaries, such as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, taught at Esalen, and various psychedlics were used by the staff and students, although drug-use was not officially endorsed. Strangely, the Institute was never raided by the authorities. (Anderson, pg 108)

Charles Manson and members of his family played an impromptu concert at Esalen three days before their massacre at the Sharon Tate house. (Anderson, 239)

In the late 1970's, Esalen became involved with an Englishwoman named Jenny O'Connor, who claimed to be in psychic contact with the Nine (probably the same Nine that Andriah Puharichclaimed to be in contact with). Dick Price and other members of the Esalen staff became increasingly dependent on the Nine, to the point of listing them as program leaders and members of the Esalen Gesalt Staff in brochures. (Anderson, pg 302-4)

In the 1970's, Mike Murphy became interested in Russian parapsychology, and visited the country to meet experimenters in this field. This led to a close connection between Esalen and some Russian officials, who set up an exchange program. Lasting into the 1980's, this exchange was dubbed "hot-tub diplomacy". John Mack was reportedly involved in this exchange.

Esalen also held seminars in quantum physics, and was the birthplace of the Physics/Consciousness Research Group. Some results of these seminars are documented in Zukav, Gary, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Morrow Quill, 1979.

In May 1982, Elisabeth and Russell Targ held a workshop on psychic phenomena for twenty-five professionals. This was part of a program with Stanislav Grof, who was studying non-chemical alternatives for altered states of consciousness. The Targs goal was to show that psychic experiences did not require an altered state.

Sunday, 4 June 2017

Small bomb - minor injuries, IRA Code-Word... all of the usual Provo hallmarks.

We could lay that on at... 90 minutes notice.

Urquhart :

No... not this time - I was thinking some more like:

a Happening.

Elizabeth Urquhart :

Bit of Street Theatre - with a happy ending

Urquhart :

And a moral, of course...

"The King of England is a Venetian Doge"

- Benjamin Disreali

Conningsby

Machiavelli wrote that the Venetians had “fixed in their souls the intention of creating a monarchy on the Roman model.” This is corroborated by a dispatch of the ambassador of Louis XII of France at the court of the Emperor Maximilian I some years later, which described the Venetians as:

“traders in human blood, traitors to the Christian faith who have tacitly divided up the world with the Turks, and who are already planning to throw bridgeheads across the Danube, the Rhine, the Seine, and Tagus, and the Ebro, attempting to reduce Europe to a province and to keep it subjugated to their armies.”

These megalomaniac plans of the Venetians were no secret. In 1423, the Doge Tommaso Mocenigo had urged upon his fellow oligarchs a policy of expansionism which would make them the overlords “of all the Gold and of Christendom.”

The most penetrating indictments of the Venetians during this period were issued by Pope Pius II Piccolomino, who tried in vain to force Venice into joining a crusade against the Turks. A Venetian saying of this period was Prima son Vinizian, poi son Cristian. (I am a Venetian first, then a Christian.”)

In his Commentaries, Pius II excoriates the Venetians for their duplicitous treachery, and establishes the fact that they are a pagan, totalitarian state. The Venetians, he says, have acted in their diplomacy:

“with the good faith characteristics of barbarians, or after the manner of traders whose nature it is to weigh everything by utility, paying no attention to honor. But what do fish care about law? As among the brute beasts aquatic creatures have the least intelligence, so among human beings the Venetians are the least just and the least capable of humanity, and naturally so, for they live on the sea and pass their lives in the water; they use ships instead of horses; they are not so much companions of men as of fish and comrades of marine monsters. They please only themselves, and while they talk they listen to and admire themselves…. They are hypocrites. They wish to appear as Christians before the world, but in reality they never think of God and, except for the state, which they regard as a deity, they hold nothing sacred, nothing holy.

To a Venetian, that is just which is for the good of the state; that is pious which increases The Empire….

What the senate approves is holy even though it is opposed to the gospel….

They are allowed to do anything that will bring them to supreme power.

All law and right may be violated for the sake of power.”

During many of these years Venetians were in a tacit alliance with the Turks. When, for example, a revolt against Venetian rule in Albania was started, threatening the Venetian naval base at Durazzo, the Venetians made a deal with the Turks to crush the revolt. On one occasion Pius II received the Venetian ambassador to the Roman court and condemned Venetian policy with these words:

“Your cause is one with thieves and robbers…. No power was ever greater than the Roman empire and yet God overthrew it because it was impious, and He put in its place the priesthood because it respected divine law….

You think [your] republic will last forever.

It will not last long.

Your population so wickedly gathered together will soon be scattered abroad. The offscourings of fishermen will be exterminated. A mad state cannot long stand.”

Saturday, 28 March 2015

The seven liberal arts were taught in two groups: the trivium and the quadrivium :

Trivium:

Grammar

Dialectic (logic)

Rhetoric

Quadrivium:

Arithmetic

Geometry

Astronomy

Music

During the Middle Ages, the liberal arts were central to university education. The quadrivium followed the preparatory work of the trivium.

The area and range of the liberal arts evolved in time. Originally, most of the teaching, and all of the text-books, would have been in Latin, the language the students would have learnt at school before they came to college. In the beginning the courses were aimed at educating the elite in the classical works. Eventually, the meaning of "liberal arts" got extended to include both humanities and science. But even today, practical activities as agriculture, business, engineering, pedagogy or pharmacy are excluded from the liberal arts. The liberal professions include only professions which require education at university, mainly law and medicine.

MasonicWorld.com

A Stroll Through The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences

By Richard D. Marcus

George Washington Lodge # 337 F&AM, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

Throughout our lives, we have heard of the liberal arts and sciences. But until we were presented with them in The Winding Stair lecture, most of us had only a vague notion of what they consisted. The Fellowcraft Degree commends Freemasons to study the Liberal Arts and Sciences, which are grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. When we study the historical background for this list, we will uncover layers of Masonic meanings for us in each of the seven areas of knowledge.

Parts of the original list date back to ancient Greece. By medieval times, the completed list had become central to educators and scholastics. The following remarkable woodblock print symbolically captures the relationship of knowledge to crafts.

This print is German from about AD 1500. It shows a goddess holding a book and a rod. She is called Wisdom or Sophia. The love of wisdom or the "philio of Sophia" is the meaning of the word Philosophy. We see Wisdom’s lifeblood pouring into all of the arts and crafts drawn as young men. All knowledge is united in this illustration. Painters, architects, musicians, and soldiers receive Wisdom.

Proverbs 9:1 says, "Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars." Religious scholars have long speculated upon the seven pillars of Wisdom. Wisdom is poured out to seven vocations or callings. Wisdom also is seen presiding over branches of knowledge.

This leads us to a second woodblock print, which also is German from about the same time. This one includes clear words representing the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. Once again a book and rod, symbols of a teacher, are held by a three-headed winged Wisdom. She oversees seven maidens.

In AD 420, Marcianus Capella in Carthage wrote an allegory of the Phoebus-Apollo, God of the Sun, presenting the Seven Liberal Arts as maids to his bride Philology, a lover of words. Thereafter, artists have illustrated the liberal arts and sciences as maids. The maids congregate around Wisdom. Knowledge is drawn within a circle. Above Wisdom are morals and theology. In the bottom corners are Aristotle and possibly Plato. But the central figures are the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The Winding Stair

Youth, manhood, and age are the three stages of our lives. Likewise, the three degrees of Masonry progress from youth to manhood to maturity. The EA degree builds a foundation of brotherly love, relief, and truth. The FC degree leads us toward successful manhood with an attentive ear, an instructive tongue, and a faithful breast. The MM degree teaches us, among other things, that time and patience will accomplish all things.

We advance in life as if we were climbing a winding stair. We cannot see too far ahead. Our progress requires courage to press on as we grow and mature. We first encounter the three steps in Masonry. Next, we master our five senses as we observe our world. And we climb the steps of the seven liberal arts and sciences. Likewise, education is a process of steps up a winding stair. First grade teaches us to read and write simple ideas. We progress up the steps of schooling to abstract concepts and ideas.

There must be many fields of knowledge that could have been listed: history, chemistry, or literature. Yet this list is commended to our consideration. Why "grammar"? Why "rhetoric"? We may well ask, "Why this list and not others?"

A History of the List

The phrase, the liberal arts, comes from the Latin artes liberales. Liber is translated both as Free and Book. Much of the well-educated in antiquity disliked work. If you were indentured as an apprentice, you were not free to study what you wanted. You had to do what was assigned to you. The artes illiberales were vocational studies aimed for an economic purpose, such as a being a stonemason. So it is intriguing that speculative Masonry encourages us to study the liberal arts and sciences.

The history of the seven liberal arts and sciences is intricate, but chiefly Pythagoras, Plato, and St. Augustine play key roles in framing it.

Pythagoras, illustrated above, was not only a great mathematician and philosopher, he was a master Greek theologian. His students in the Academy looked for connections between Geometry and the Divine. His disciples sought relationships in music, arithmetic, and astronomy. Pythagoras is associated with the last four in the list of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. Pythagoras was at his peak around 520 BC.

About BC 400, Plato wrote of the importance of education for citizens in The Republic. Plato (illustrated in a statue above) emphasized logic, philosophy, and dialectic. For Plato, logic represented our highest cognitive faculty. To see both sides of an argument, the pro and the con, is to understand it.

St. Augustine of Hippo left behind 5 million words that still exist today. Though he lived in the third century AD, he was the greatest teacher of rhetoric in the known world. He held that if one wished to defend truth, one must be eloquent to refute falsehood through the power of oratory. He filled out the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences with his emphasis on grammar and rhetoric.

An Orderly List

There is wisdom in the order of the items in the list. Teachers and scholastics have found these seven and their general order to be of great utility. Home-schoolers today are returning to this list to start with grammar and rhetoric in their education.

As infants, we are unable to speak. We must learn words to describe everything. Words organize our thoughts. Language is essential for learning. As we progress up the winding stairs, we learn to speak with eloquence and grace, which is rhetoric. We learn to use logic to make our arguments persuasive and true.

We advance up the lessons to higher levels of arithmetic, geometry, and music. These require abstract thinking and greater levels of concentration. As we mature in life, we gain perspective and wisdom as we enjoy the glorious works of creation, the stars and planets, astronomy, and the Divine. The order of these topics was developed over a thousand years. They continue to attract our attention today.

The Trivium

The Trivium comes from the Latin for Three Vias or roads. The first three of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences represent a crossroads or intersection where the public meets. We could call it the public square, where the public meets to discuss the usual topics of the day: the weather and harvest.

Those who excel at quickly remembering common experience are good at "trivia." Trivia is at the center of everyday knowledge. The Trivium consists of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic.

1. Grammar

In Genesis, the first job given to Adam is to name all things. Adam is told to name them and to have dominion over creation. Knowing the name of things gives a man authority to speak and to understand.

In elementary school or Grammar School we learn to recite the alphabet, numbers, and colors. Grammar involves words and meanings. The earliest lessons in speaking involve repetition and alliteration. We say tongue twisters and recite phrases to learn to speak. We say, "she sells sea shells by the seashore" as an articulation exercise. Children learn their own language as well as foreign languages. To learn another language, grammar and structure are essential.

Grammar can be divided into technical or exegetical grammar. Technical grammar is what most of us associate with the word grammar ― diagramming sentences with subjects and verbs. Grammar involves learning declensions for verbs and nouns. But exegetical grammar involves learning the meaning of words, their nuances, and how they fit in different settings.

We learn that deferential language is appropriate to use for speaking to those in authority over us. We are told to keep a tongue of good report in the FC Charge. The FC historical lecture directs us to have an instructive tongue so that we become better men. Grammar teaches us to speak clearly and concisely.

2. Rhetoric

A synonym for rhetoric is persuasion. To study rhetoric is to study speaking and writing to persuade others. Too often we think of rhetoric as unimportant, as in the throwaway line, "well that was just a rhetorical comment." Rhetoric is serious business: it has substance. Rhetoric is essential in the study of law and regulations. Roscoe Pound, Albert Mackey, and Allen Roberts were some of the greatest writers on Masonic jurisprudence. They were marvelously persuasive writers as well.

Influential Romans learned to speak in public with fluency and oratory. Newly initiated Entered Apprentices are invited to speak in Lodge on whatever was on their hearts. Public speaking is terrifying to some: but to Freemasons, we learn both to speak to listen to others.

Rhetoric adds force and elegance to our thoughts. As we improve in rhetoric, we captivate the hearer with both the strength of our arguments and the beauty of our expression. Our mastery of rhetoric teaches us to entreat and exhort our brethren to acts of charity. Skillful rhetoric uses tact to admonish our brothers. Rhetoric weaves praise to applaud excellence in conduct or deportment.

Discussion in lodge gives us practice in listening to train the ear. As we climb the winding stairs, we must gain mastery of our five senses. One of the moral principals taught in the FC Degree is to have an attentive ear. Listening teaches us to hear the poetry of language and word order. We know somehow that Faith, Hope, and Charity sounds better than Charity, Faith, and Hope.

Lodge discussions offer opportunities to explore styles of learning. Our oaths and promises are heard and repeated. We prepare them in our posting. We listen to historic lectures, orations, or talks on speculative Masonry. The various tokens and grips in our ritual are lessons in listening. We are asked, will you be off or from? By listening we hear the word and give the proper reply. As we talk and listen to each other in lodge, we grow in appreciation of debate and exhortation. We are brothers speaking to and listening to one another.

3. Logic

Logic is the third step of the Trivium. Logic directs and guides us after truth. It consists of a regular train of argument where we deduce or infer from the facts. Logic leads us to conclusions based on our knowledge.

We use all of our faculties of conceiving, judging, reasoning, and disposing of questions before us. Logic trains the mind to think clearly. We are charged to be good men and true. Sincerity and plain dealing should distinguish any Mason.

Dialectics is the term used to describe critical thinking. We weigh the pros and cons to find the better choice. We observe the world. As we see patterns and relationships, we begin to make predictions using inductive reasoning. Dialectics guides us to make proofs or syllogisms.

Early on, we find that you can disprove assertions easier than prove them. Reductio ad absurdum means to find a contradiction that proves the opposite. It is easy to disprove, "all elephants can fly," simply by finding one that can’t. A single observation proves that, "not all elephants can fly."

The education of our minds includes proofs and deductive reasoning. We start to see actions that help one person may not help all. We learn to avoid arguments that something is true or false simply by who says it, instead of its inherent truth.

As we advance in logic, we begin to think about proofs for the existence of God. We see the beauty of an autumn leave, so intricate and perfect. The teleological proof of God’s existence is that design in nature proves that there must have been a designer, our G.A.O.T.U.

Grammar, rhetoric, and logic are the trivium, or first three, of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. We are charged to polish and adorn the mind by studying them.

The Quadrivium

The Quadrivium is associated with science and learning the mysteries of the universe. Pythagoras is chiefly responsible for these four branches of science: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

The Quadrivium means the Four Vias or paths. Where four roads converge is the center of the town or city. We leave the village of three roads and progress to the more advanced level of the city. A robust mind progresses as if upon roads or paths to the secrets of wisdom. A wise man strolls along the paths of science.

4. Arithmetic

Arithmetic involves computation or reckoning with numbers. Ignorance of numbers leaves many things unintelligible. To perceive the world accurately, we need facility with counting and measurement. Mathematics is taught step by step. We first learn to count before we learn to add and subtract. As a science, it is progressive by building skill and familiarity through frequent practice.

We develop abstract operations such as addition and multiplication. A number of Masonic writers have handed down a useful moral lesson: For the Freemason, the application of this science is to:

Add to your knowledge

Never subtract from the character of your neighbor

Multipleyour benevolence to your fellow creatures

& Divide your means with those in need.

Arithmetic offers a structured system. In has rules, order, and operates in terms of equations. Balance and equality are principles learned in arithmetic that should remind us to act on the level.

There is beauty in arithmetic and mathematics. We discover symmetry and proportion. Numbers fascinates us. Leonardo Fibonacci in AD 1201 discovered that rabbits reproduced in a series of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13. Ratios of any two successive numbers approach the Golden Mean, which is 1.618. The inverse of 1.618 is .618. The same digits reappear. The Parthenon was built on this same proportion of the length 161.8% of the height.

We feel awe and wonder at the beauty of mathematics. We find fractal patterns in biology, chemistry, and physics that are repeated. The Fibonacci spiral is found in conch shells

Mathematics shows that some propositions are right, and some are wrong. It indirectly teaches us about morality. There is no moral relativity here.

5. Geometry

Geometry concatenates geo and metric, or earth measurement, within it. Geometry discovers unmeasured areas by comparing them to areas already measured. Geometry is synonymous with self-knowledge, the understanding of the basic substance of our being. Freemasonry places special emphasis on geometry.

The tools of geometry are plumbs, squares, and levels. They are the basic tools of operative Masons. We use them in speculative Masonry to teach lessons of right-behavior, rectitude, and truthfulness. Our conductor in the FC degree leads us much like the apprentice is led by a Master of his trade.

The sense of seeing is developed in Geometry. We grow in perceiving which structures are in order and which ones are not well arranged. We acknowledge that geometric is the foundation of architecture.

6. Music

Music is the sixth of the seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. Pythagoras and his followers were keen on studying music as a science.

Music is part of us. Our heartbeat is the basic pattern, with sounds ranging from the first cry of a newborn baby to our last gasp for breath. The sense of hearing is improved, so that we recognize ditties and rhythms and syncopation. Clapping and singing are part of who were are as humans.

Vibrations cause sounds. Pitch is determined by the frequency of the vibrations. We learn to hear major, minor, and chromatic scales. We attempt to match the pitch of the lead singer. It takes discipline, but we achieve harmony. Many have sought to hear the sounds of the universe in radio frequency. Whole pieces of music have been dedicated to the music of the spheres.

The Senior Warden is sometimes associated with this Science, as the Warden asks for harmony in the Lodge.

7. Astronomy

Astronomy is last in this list of Arts and Sciences as we contemplate the stars and planets, and yes, the G.A.O.T.U.

Time and space seem to dwarf us. We feel tiny as we look at the Milky Way. Often it is said that the Fear of God is the Beginning of Wisdom. Looking at the universe helps to instill both fear and a sense of the glory of the universe.

The globes in the Lodge teach us to understand the rotation of the earth around the sun and the diurnal rotation of the earth. Daylight shrinks in the days before December 22nd, and then begins to lengthen. We observe this. Times and seasons are understood by contemplating astronomy.

A Charge in the Liberal Arts and Sciences

The Seven Liberal Arts & Sciences are branches of Wisdom or Learning. If we are to become better men, we should work on becoming better able to understand our world. These seven are key to learning other areas of knowledge including history and psychology. These branches are like rooms in a magnificent garden in which we should daily stroll.

There is a charge to us in these seven steps. That charge for us is to continue to be learners. Our education doesn't stop in high school or college. We are to continue to read classic literature, the Bible, biographies, history. We should see ourselves as life-long learners.

We should better comprehend the use of music, plays, and art in our lives. We should use math and geometry. We need to continue even with the Trivium to expand our vocabulary and practice writing. As we persevere in learning throughout our lives, we will become better men in Masonry.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

"The autopilot on the doomed Germanwings plane that crashed into the Alps was abruptly switched to descend to 100 feet, according to a new report Thursday.

FlightRadar24, an online tracking service that uses satellite data, found evidence the autopilot was adjusted to its lowest setting before the plane started its steady fall from the sky, Reuters reported.

FlightRadar said its review of data showed the autopilot was manually changed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet and 9 seconds later the aircraft started to descend, probably with the “open descent” autopilot setting, the firm’s CEO Fredrik Lindahl said. The plane slammed into a mountain at 6,000 feet, killing 150 people."

schizophrenia

ˌskɪtsə(ʊ)ˈfriːnɪə/

noun

a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

(in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.

"There were, what? Thirty-five attempts on the life of General DeGaulle...? Standing up for the dignity of France, and standing in defiance of being the battlefield for a Limited Nuclear War... He was therefore targetted by, in effect, the NATO Establishment, and the same can be said of the Aldo Moro case in Italy...." - Tarpley

http://www.jimstone.is/a320crash.html

HERE WE HAVE THE EDITED REPORT, WITH THE FIGHTER JETS REMOVED. If they get put back into the story and lies are hatched for damage control it is TOO LATE, the fact they chose to expunge this information irrevocably proves they never wanted these fighter jets to be mentioned, and THAT SAYS IT ALL. TOO LATE, BUSTED:

So now we have:

1. Plane took forever to crash and pilots never contacted the tower. That is a huge mystery, even according to the tower.

2. An Airbus with a remote control option.3. Fighter jet escorts, along with a very good description about how they appeared (they were not UFO's)4. A redaction of the fighter jet escorts.LOGICAL OUTPUT: 1. The pilots never contacted the tower because 2. The fighter jets prevented it by either jamming communications off or 3. turning them off via remote control, and then crashing the jet via remote. 4. Expungement of the fighter jets from the news reports NAILS IT ALL, THIS ONE IS SHOT DEAD AND SERVED COLD.5. REMOTE CONTROL WAS USED TO ELIMINATE A SEPARATE DEBRIS FIELD WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY A SHOOT DOWN AND RAISED QUESTIONS.

AND NOW THE BIG QUESTION IS: WHO WAS ON THAT PLANE?

" The A320 that crashed on Tuesday was operated by Germanwings, a low-cost carrier operated by Lufthansa, and had 150 people on board. The French president said there were probably no survivors.

The aircraft had been in service for 24 years. Airbus said that it had accumulated more than 58,000 flight hours over more than 46,000 flights. A Germanwings official told reporters that the last routine maintenance check was performed on Monday.

The A320 is sophisticated, one of the first highly computerized, or fly-by-wire, planes in service. Because the crash did not happen on takeoff or landing, whatever happened was probably sudden and catastrophic, air safety experts said. "

NBC

The Airbus A320 is now equipped with a full Autoland system as standard.

I quote an airline pilot :

" Autoland is a function that uses the whole autoflight system to automatically land the aircraft. Rollout is a ground directional control mode that lives within the autoflight system. There are autoland systems that disconnect at touchdown and don’t have a rollout mode, so they don’t have to go together.

Autoland is the whole function…it’s going to include ILS tracking during the approach (lateral-directional and pitch control), x-wind compensation and flare on final, potentially rollout after touchdown, and maybe assorted automatic stopping function (autospoilers, autobrakes, brake-to-vacate, etc.) depending on the aircraft. Rollout is the specific control mode that’s used to control direction (centerline) after touchdown.

To summarize: you can have autoland with no rollout capability, but you can’t have rollout without an autoland. Rollout, therefore, is a control mode of the autoland system, which is a function of the autoflight system.The idea is to continue keeping the Aircraft aligned to the runway after touchdown. "

Autopilot on doomed German plane reportedly set to crash

New details on co-pilot accused of crashing Germanwings jet

The autopilot on the doomed Germanwings plane that crashed into the Alps was abruptly switched to descend to 100 feet, according to a new report Thursday.

FlightRadar24, an online tracking service that uses satellite data, found evidence the autopilot was adjusted to its lowest setting before the plane started its steady fall from the sky, Reuters reported.

French prosecutors said Andreas Lubitz, the 28-year-old who officials locked the pilot out of the Germanwings cockpit and then calmly slammed the plane into a mountainside at 430 miles per hour. He reportedly battled burnout and depression in 2009, while training to realize his dream of flying.

FlightRadar said its review of data showed the autopilot was manually changed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet and 9 seconds later the aircraft started to descend, probably with the “open descent” autopilot setting, the firm’s CEO Fredrik Lindahl said. The plane slammed into a mountain at 6,000 feet, killing 150 people.

Lindahl said FlightRadar24 shared its findings with French crash investigators.

With no apparent ties to terrorism, authorities were focusing Thursday on the mental state of the German co-pilot believed to have intentionally crashed a plane into the French Alps Tuesday, killing all 150 aboard.

It was not known if Lubitz' mental issues continued to plague him years later, but new clues could emerge from searches that took place Thursday at a Dusseldorf apartment Libitz maintained as well as at his parents' home in Montabaur, a small town in western Germany.

French prosecutor Robin Brice insisted Thursday that Lubitz had no known ties to terrorism that could explain the act.

"A terrorist?" he said in response to a question. "Absolutely not."

Three Americans were among those killed, including Yvonne and Emily Selke, a mother and daughter from Virginia, and Robert Oliver, whose name, but no further details, was released Thursday by the State Department.

Clues from the Airbus 320's cockpit voice recorder painted a partial picture of a calm and calculated effort by Lubitz. As the plane left Barcelona, Lubitz and Capt. Patrick Sonderheimer chatted amiably. But as the plane neared cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, Lubitz's replies became more clipped. And when Sonderheimer rose to leave the cockpit, likely to use the restroom, Lubitz appeared to put his deadly plan into action.

"I'm leaving you in charge," Sonderheimer said.

Robin said in a Paris that the evidence from the cockpit voice recorder, one of two "black boxes" and the only one recovered so far, indicates Lubitz refused to open the cabin door when Sonderheimer returned, beginning the 8-minute descent "manually and intentionally."

Robin said the commander of the plane knocked several times "without response." He said the door could only be blocked manually.

The information was pulled from the black box cockpit voice recorder, but Robin said the co-pilot did not say a word after the commanding pilot left the cockpit.

"It was absolute silence in the cockpit," he said.

Screams can be heard from passengers in the final seconds of their lives, officials said.

It was the co-pilot's "intention to destroy this plane," Robin said. The recorder captured his normal breathing patterns, suggesting Lubitz was not incapacitated.

"It wasn't the breath of somebody who was struggling,” the prosecutor said. “He didn't say a single word. Total silence."

Asked when passengers realized their fate, Robin said, "We only hear screams at the very end. Death was instant.”

During the final minutes of the flight's descent, pounding could be heard on the cockpit door as plane alarms sounded, but the co-pilot's breathing was normal throughout the whole time, Robin said.

"It's obvious this co-pilot took advantage of the commander's absence. Could he have known he would leave? It is too early to say," he said.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the airline was already "appalled" by what happened in its low-cost subsidiary.

"I could not have imagined that becoming even worse," Spohr said in Cologne. "We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully."

In the German town of Montabaur, acquaintances told The Associated Press that Lubitz showed no signs of depression when they saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot's license.

"He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly. "He gave off a good feeling."

Lubitz, 28, joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly after training which included a stint at a facility near Phoenix, Aiz., and had flown 630 hours. Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr described both pilots as "experienced and trained."

Robin said the Germanwings plane's second black box still had not been found but remains of the victims were being collected and DNA identification had begun.

The plane was about halfway through its flight when it descended from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to around 6,000 feet in approximately eight minutes. During that time, the co-pilot did not respond to radio calls from French air traffic controllers, who alerted authorities when the plane disappeared from their radar screens.

The Wall Street Journal, citing Airbus training materials, reported that many Airbus jets are fitted with crew-controlled locks designed to prevent unauthorized access to the flight deck. In some planes, the cockpit can be accessed through a keypad code, but pilots can also lock out external access for five minutes or longer by flipping a certain switch in the cockpit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lufthansa Airbus crash in the Alps. Same pattern as the others.

It seems a switch can be flipped, power to the aircraft gets cut off, and without power, the plane inevitably crashes. Is this the standard method of country control now? Aircraft all have a kill switch, operable by the CIA/Mossad. It gets used as a way to pressure the nations into line. I feel for the families who lost so many children today.

While the White House, seemingly an expert in determining airplane crashes causes within hours if not minutes of the accident (see flight MH-17) has already opined on the tragic crash of the Lufthansa Germanwings airplane:

WHITE HOUSE: NO INDICATION OF TERRORISM IN AIRPLANE CRASH

This will hardly be comfort to the families of the 148 people who lost their lives the crash which took place in the south Franch alps, and where the first images of the debris have just been released, via Airlive.net

Further evidence that the airplane crash was not a midair disintegration is that while the vertical airspeed was susbtantial, it wasn’t freefall, and it took the airplane about 10 minutes to drop from a height of 11.5 to its final resting place some 2 kilometers high in the alps (via Zeit).

A local lawmaker says the debris from the plane crash in the French Alps that killed all 150 people on board is spread over 100-200 meters (110-220 yards).

Gilbert Sauvan, president of the general council of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, told the AP that “everything is pulverized.”

He said the largest pieces of debris are the size of a small car.

Sauvan said no one can access the site from the ground, but that helicopters are circling the area to get information and 500 firefighters and gendarmes are in the area.

The boss of airline Germanwings says the plane went into a long descent before it crashed into the French Alps, likely killing all 150 people on board.

Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann said the plane began descending again shortly after it reached its cruising height following takeoff from Barcelona Airport. The descent lasted eight minutes, he told reporters in Cologne. Radar and air traffic control contact broke off at 10:53 a.m.

He said the pilot had more than 10 years’ experience working for Germanwings and its parent airline Lufthansa. Airbus said the A320 was delivered to Lufthansa in 1991.

Germanwings said the passenger manifest included two babies. Officials believe there were 67 German nationals on board.

JIM STONE EXTRACT –

To the idiots out there who might say “Oh, the conspiracy crowd solved this before a single investigator arrived at the crash scene:” There are only a few things you need to know to solve this one, the rest is just scammery:

1. The plane descended for 10 minutes, and NO WORD FROM THE PILOTS. How can that happen? Jamming of communications. Who could have jammed communications?

2. The fighter jets, which were following this Airbus. THEY could have jammed the communications with ease, AND shot it down. They probably did not shoot it down OR EVEN NEED TO JAM COMMUNICATIONS because:

3. The plane was equipped with remote control (for “hijack recovery”) AS A STANDARD FEATURE. That level of external control would make switching off communications via remote control a NO BRAINER.

NO CONTACT WITH THE TOWER SAYS IT ALL, A REMOTE CONTROLLED CRASH REALLY IS THE OVERWHELMING ANSWER.

Why would fighter jets be following at just the right time anyway? That alone CINCHES IT. We really do need to figure out who was on that plane.

BUSTED: CENSORSHIP OF NEWS PROVES THE FIGHTER JETS DID INDEED DOWN THIS GERMAN AIRCRAFT, IF THEY DID NOT, WHY EXPUNGE THE NEWS OF THEIR PRESENCE?

TAP – Jim explains the plane crashed at full throttle doing 600 mph, which suggests control of the aircraft from outside the plane.

Also There Was A US Spook On Board

The mother, Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, had worked for Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Washington for 23 years, and her daughter Emily Selke was a 2013 graduate of Drexel University in Philadelphia. According to the AP, Yvonne Selke worked under contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the satellite mapping office for the Department of Defense.

“Yvonne was a wonderful co-worker and a dedicated employee who spent her career with the firm,” Booz Allen’s chief personnel officer, Betty Thompson, told the AP.

The Murdoch NYT reports – PARIS — As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed amid a relatively clear sky, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.

A senior military official involved in the investigation described “very smooth, very cool” conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” the investigator said. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.”

He said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

While the audio seemed to give some insight into the circumstances leading to the Germanwings crash on Tuesday morning, it also left many questions unanswered.